Mini and Adobe CS3 vs G4 tower and CS2

Question

Graphic artist is using
tower G4 Dual 1GHz
2mb L3 cache per processor
1.5 gb RAM with Creative Suite 2
I am suggesting we move on to a MacMini 1.66GHZ with 1 gig Ram using CS3...
Any opinions on relative speeds - I have CS2 on a Mini and it is slower than the G4, but I'd reckon CS3 on Intel would be quicker? All we would install would be Office and CS3.
(more RAM is an option, but just out of the box - what do you think?)

Answer 1

CS3 would indeed be quicker on an Intel mini since it's Intel native, thus runs without the memory and performance hit caused by Rosetta. I'd expect a 1.66 mini with 1Gb RAM and native software to outperform a dual 1GHz processor G4 by a notable margin, suffering only from a slower hard drive. However, since you note the intention to also use MS Office, which is NOT yet Intel native, I'd expect running that to cause the system a significant slowdown because it would require Rosetta to run in the background. Under that circumstance, I'd urge the system to be upgraded to the max of 2Gb RAM, which should allow enough room for CS3 to run well, and still provide sufficient RAM to get reasonable performance from MS Office. Alternatively, you could perhaps download Neo Office instead (it's fully MS Office compatible, free and Intel native) in which case 1Gb would be sufficient (2 would be better).
And just to add to the possible complications, I'd also want to throw in an external, faster, FW drive, which could be set up to boot from and squeeze even more performance out of the system.
Ooops - ON EDIT: Neo Office can be found at http://neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php